


Places Where We Dare Not Speak

by Lavendergaia



Series: Places Where We Dare Not Speak Verse [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fitzsimmons Secret Valentine, Happy Ending, there are no actual zombies in this zombie fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 09:53:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3352289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavendergaia/pseuds/Lavendergaia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You know that we’re living in a zombie apocalypse, right?”<br/>"It does have a remarkable resemblance to modern stories of the roaming undead.”</p><p>As what's left of the world falls apart around her, Jemma meets a young man in a grocery store.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Places Where We Dare Not Speak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verbivore8642](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verbivore8642/gifts).



> Secondary Fitzsimmons Secret Valentine gift for Verbivore8642! Because with certain prompts, you can't have just one.
> 
> Thanks to Typhanni/notapepper and Ardentaislinn for the beta.

It was midafternoon when Jemma found the grocery store off a side street less than a mile from the highway. What she assumed had at one time been a fairly busy neighborhood grocer—full of cars and families and people going about their lives—was now abandoned. The parking lot was empty aside from various pieces of trash and a pile of glass near the entrance that she managed to sidestep, sun glinting off the sharp edges. There was no sound other than that of the asphalt crunching under the soles of her shoes.

Adjusting her backpack higher up on her shoulders, she approached the front doors carefully. She looked through the glass of what had once been automatic doors, trying to spot any movement inside. The last thing she needed was a surprise.

After not seeing any movement or shadows, she dug her fingers into the groove of the doors and pulled until they separated enough that she could slip her small frame through the opening. Overturned metal racks had sent yellowing newspapers littering the floor. The few registers within her immediate view had been cleaned out, leaving only a few packs of gum and peanuts. Jemma picked her way through the papers on the floor, trying to avoid making noise despite her thick-soled boots.

Walking through one of the register lanes, she stepped carefully towards the aisles, glancing through to see what was left. There were thirteen aisles and everyone she passed was almost empty. This area had been abandoned for weeks now; it was likely anyone who was around to go scavenging had already done so. The dried food aisle actually was not as bare as she had expected, but that wasn’t of any use. There was no running water and any water she found would be difficult to boil.

She went to turn down the next aisle when she was greeted with the barrel of a handgun. “Don’t move,” said the man on the floor, voice thick with pain and a slight Scottish accent, but there was no waver in his determination. “I will shoot you.”

Jemma looked slowly from the gun to his face—he had large blue eyes set under a firm brow. He didn’t look any older than she was. He was leaning against the shelves of the aisle and as she continued to look him over, she could see why: his right leg was spread out before him, hastily bandaged with blood seeping through the gauze. Taking a deep breath and hoping she was the only one to hear her heart thudding in her chest, she said, “You’re injured.”

“Not injured enough that I can’t shoot you.”

“I’m a doctor. I can help.” She turned her head enough to look behind her, groping on the shelves until she found the box of plastic gloves that she had been looking for. The man’s hand tightened around the gun as she ripped open the sides of the box and pulled out a pair, snapping the latex over her hands. “Let me see.”

Before he could object, she was on her knees in front of him, letting her backpack fall to the ground behind her and pulling the wrinkled paper tape away from his skin. He hissed as it ripped away and she winced. “Sorry, sorry,” she murmured under her breath. When she got the poorly done bandage off of the cut, she could see that it wasn’t very deep, but it hadn’t been cleaned well at all and there were several smaller abrasions that could at least use plasters. Shaking her head, she said, “I can fix this right up. Give me a minute.”

Pulling off the gloves, she ran over to the nearest register, searching for some plastic shopping bags. It wouldn’t do to leave biohazard material just lying about. When she returned back to the man, he had lowered the gun, but his hand was still wrapped around the grip, finger resting on the safety rather than the trigger. It was progress, she supposed.

After gathering the necessary supplies and pulling on a fresh pair of gloves, she carefully stuck the tarnished and bloodied material in the plastic bag before getting to work. “What’s your name?” she said, cleaning the wound with hydrogen peroxide in lieu of sterile water. He bit back a curse rather than answer her. “My name’s Jemma Simmons.”

The dim lighting of the aisle made it difficult to see how clean the wound was getting and after the third pour of hydrogen peroxide, he glared at her, reaching out to still her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice trembling, but then she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.” It was firmer this time. “But I can’t tell if it’s clean yet and if it isn’t clean, it could get infected and if you get infected, your immune system could be compromised, and then…”

“I know,” he said dejectedly, closing his eyes and nodding. “Yeah, I know.” He let go of her wrist and leaned back again, taking several deep breaths. “I’m Fitz.”

Finally setting the hydrogen peroxide down, she unscrewed a tube of Neosporin. “Banged yourself up pretty good here, Fitz.”

He laughed humorlessly. “Always had a feeling I wouldn’t make it out of a zombie apocalypse. Just proving myself right.”

Her hands stilled as she ripped open a package of gauze. “They’re…they’re technically not zombies.” Shaking off her nerves, she pressed the non-stick gauze to his wound, making sure it was fully covered with some excess on the sides. “They’re actually just infected citizens—”

“PR spin,” he said with a snort.

“—who are not undead or actually any sort of dead.” Jemma swallowed hard as she nudged his arm with her elbow. “Hold this down for me.”

He did as she instructed, his large hand pressing down on the gauze while she opened a new roll of paper tape, not wanting to use one that he had probably contaminated. “You know that we’re living in a zombie apocalypse, right?”

“I know that the infected people are people who are very alive and did not crawl out of graves or any other media sensationalization that people have heard and caused a frenzy that only led to more deaths and chaos.” She ripped off some tape, placing it across his skin in long, sure strips.

“Jemma.”

She finished the bandage in silence before saying, “It does, however, have a remarkable resemblance to modern stories of the roaming undead.” There were a few other cuts and scrapes on his leg that she was able to clean and bandage quickly with plasters. “Is there anywhere else that you’re hurt?” When he shook his head slowly, she sat back with a satisfied nod and removed her gloves. “What about paracetamol or ibuprofen, have you taken any? It’ll help with the pain and the swelling.”

“’m fine,” he said, rubbing sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm.

“That’s not an answer.”

Fixing her with a wry smile, he huffed out a breath through his nose. “No. I haven’t taken any.”

There was a small bottle a few shelves above her head and Jemma reached up to snag it. She shook a couple of pills into her hand, holding it out to him until he opened his palm to her so she could transfer them. It seemed like he was just going to stick them in his mouth when she tutted. “Don’t dry swallow, it’s bad for you.”

“There are possible zombies outside going to kill me and I’ve got a big gash in my leg, but dry swallowing is bad for me?”

Ignoring him, she reached into her backpack and pulled out a half-full bottle of water. “Here. Drink this.”

He rolled his eyes but did as she instructed, emptying the bottle in just a few gulps. “Thanks.”

She didn’t really want his thanks. After putting on another fresh pair of gloves, she cleaned everything up, tying up the plastic bag tightly and standing up with it. “I’m going to see if I can find some bleach. You didn’t bleed out that much, but it would be best if there wasn’t any blood around.”

The next aisle over had housing supplies and she was pleased to find that it was significantly more stocked than the food had been. She quickly found bleach, a mop, and paper towels, depositing the bag of biohazard in a bin beneath one of the registers on the way back to Fitz. He was carefully getting to his feet when she arrived. “Do you need help?” she said as she shouldered her backpack, her eyes flicking to the gun he was still holding on to.

“I’ve got it, thanks,” he said, holding tightly to the shelf to pull himself up. Once he was standing, he slowly put weight on his right leg, seeming pleased with what he found. Looking at her out of the corner of his eye, he said, “There’s also blood near the entry. It’s not mine. Looks long-dried, but we might want to take care of it anyway.”

“Right.” When he moved out of the way, Jemma poured bleach over the bloodied spots on the floor, quickly mopping it up before allowing him to show her where the other blood had been. As he’d said, there were splatters across the entranceway, not far from where she had come in, more a stain now than anything else, but she washed it down with the bleach. Fitz leaned against the closest register as she did so, trying not to keep too much weight on his leg. “So what are you doing here?”

Jemma raised an eyebrow at him as she let the mop rest against the wall. “It’s a grocery store. I was looking for supplies.”

“People moved out of this area weeks ago.”

“Most people did, you’re right,” she said, wiping her hands off on a paper towel. “But most people don’t know anything about nutritional needs and are more likely to just get snacks that they want to eat than anything that will actually give them sustainable energy.” She was about to ask him the same thing, but kept her mouth closed, deciding not to risk raising his ire. “We should get you cleaned up. I bet there’s still hand sanitizer. People never know what’s really important.”

Fitz looked at his hands, which were smeared with dirt and blood. “Right.” As he rocked back into his feet, he swayed a bit and Jemma instinctively reached out to steady him, stopping herself before she actually touched him. Fitz eyed her hands as they neared his shoulder, but his gaze was less anger and challenge and more question and uncertainty.

Clearing her throat, Jemma headed back into the depths of the store, not moving too quickly in an effort not to make noise or get too ahead of Fitz. It didn’t take too long for her to find hand sanitizer and, after another minute, cried out in triumph. “Ha!” She pulled a package of antibacterial, pre-moistened, washcloths from the shelf.

Rolling his eyes, he pushed his already rolled up sleeves even farther up his elbows before taking the hand sanitizer and washcloths from her. As he scrubbed himself down, Jemma took a moment to look him over again. His curly hair was pressed down to his head; there was mud on his shoes and the bottom of his pants, but only blood on the right leg where she knew his injury was. He had left the top few buttons of his shirt open, probably due to the oppressive heat both outside and in the store. His Adam’s apple shook as he wiped down his arms and she found herself staring at it, spotting a few flecks of blood dotting his neck and the line above his undershirt.

She grabbed a washcloth and wrapped one hand behind his neck, unable to stop even as he froze beneath at her touch. He was warm as she pressed the cool towel to his throat, wiping down his skin from his chin to his chest, even dipping briefly under the edge of his shirt. Fitz had stopped breathing and he stared at her intently when she moved back from his personal space, holding up the towel to show him the red mixed with the dirt. “You, uh,” she fumbled over the words. “Is all this yours?”

“Must be,” he said, taking it from her. “I’ve been lucky enough not to run into anyone else.” He left the crumpled washcloths on an empty space of shelf before squirting the hand sanitizer on the back of her palms. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not sick.”

Jemma shook her head even as she rubbed the gel into her skin. “I wasn’t.”

Even the sanitizer didn’t cool her down for long, and after a few seconds, the late summer heat trapped in the grocery store made beads of sweat appear on her skin. Fitz ran a washcloth against his forehead and she couldn’t help but notice how clean he had gotten his hands: his palms, fingers, and even his nails were pristine in ways she had only ever seen from her most fastidious of colleagues. “So you’re just here for food?” he said.

“Just looking for something to eat.” She nodded to her pack. “All I’ve got is what’s left in here and it’s not much. I could ration for another day or two, but I’d be limiting my calories so much that my body would start to think I was starving anyway.”

The look he gave her was thoughtful as he shifted his weight back and forth between his two legs, each time his eyes giving away the pain in his right shin. “The shelves here have been mostly picked clean, but I did see some left.” Before she could open her mouth to say that she’d take whatever she could get to get her through, he said, “But I came in through the back. There was a door that I’m pretty sure led to the store room because it had a keypad, but you know, that’s nonfunctional now. It had a padlock on it, I guess someone trying to keep people like us out. Almost positive I can get into it. If there’s anything left in there, I’ll split it with you.”

She was so alarmed, she almost forgot to be touched by how generous the offer was. “But…but what if there’s a lot of stuff in there? Wouldn’t you want it all for yourself?”

“I’m not that kind of guy,” he said, slightly offended, but he also raised an amused eyebrow at her. “Plus, you have a _backpack_ , how much could you possibly take?”

That was potentially a good point. “How do you know I don’t have a giant truck or something?”

“Who is driving around in a giant truck anymore?” He snorted. “Plus, I would have heard it. Unless you parked far away and walked here, you’re on foot.”

For a man who couldn’t even bandage his leg, he was oddly perceptive. “Hence my caloric needs,” she admitted. “I appreciate your offer of splitting whatever rations we find. You really think you can break into that storage room?”

He smirked and started down the aisle towards the back of the store. “As soon as I get my tools from the car.” At her noise of surprise, he grinned. “Yeah, _I_ have a car.”

She walked with him to the back of the store, trying not to get too far ahead again. So many questions were weighing on her mind. How could he possibly still have a working car? He couldn’t have been there very long. Had he left it there and come back when his leg was injured? There were so many things about this man that intrigued and confused her.

“Is that a real gun?” she finally said. It was easier to get a closer look at it now that it was tucked in the back of his jeans and not being pointed at her face as she waited for him to pull the trigger and put what she had assumed was a .45 in her skull. Now she could see that the grip and barrel had a different shape to them than a usual handgun—she wasn’t overly familiar with weapons, but she would bet her life that wasn’t a standard Glock.

Fitz shrugged. “Sort of. It’s a prototype I’ve been working on. There are bullets for it, but they don’t technically work. It was meant to be an incapacitating weapon, to cause paralysis, but I never got a chance to find a stopping agent for the bullet before, you know, all this. So it’s sort of like an empty shotgun shell. It’ll hurt, but probably won’t kill unless aimed very carefully. It’d take a better or luckier shot that me.”

Their shoulders brushed as they made their way through the mostly empty store shelves. “Did you ever consider dendrotoxin?”

His head turned sharply towards her, eyebrows raised in surprise. “What?”

“Dendrotoxin, it’s a—”

“I know what it is,” he said tightly. “How do you know what it is?”

Crossing her arms over her chest, she shrugged. “I’m a biochemist.”

“You said you were a doctor.”

“Well, technically, I am,” she said, chewing the inside of her cheek. “I have two PhDs and I am a fully trained first responder.”

His loud snort seemed to echo in the empty space. “That is not the same thing.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “How’s your leg feeling?”

Licking his lips slowly, he said, “Yeah, it’s um, it feels good, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, unable to keep from smiling triumphantly.

They passed the door he had mentioned and she also would have guessed it was the store room at first glance. What was formerly probably an employee keypad had been ripped out of the wall and hung loosely by a few wires. The door was now being held shut by a large padlock. Jemma wondered exactly what kind of tools were going to open that. Fitz led her down a short hallway to a door that had an EXIT sign over it, pausing before he opened the door. “My car’s parked outside,” he whispered and she understood the need for the lowered voice. “I’ll just grab my tools and come right back.”

“Do you want me to do it?”

“You don’t trust me to come back,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

His mouth was a firm line as he stared her down and she was desperate not to squirm under his hard gaze. “That’s not it. Neither of us know if anyone is out there—infected or otherwise. Cars are sort of a shining beacon that someone is around and you can’t run if someone is there. And you don’t even have a functional weapon.”

Fitz licked his lips slowly. “I’ll be fine.”

“Will you really?” She had her hand on his shoulder before she realized what she was doing. “Look, I wouldn’t blame you for leaving. You came to get something to fix your leg, am I right? And now it’s all bandaged up. You’ll want to replace the gauze, especially when the tape comes loose, but it’s cleaned out now, so you shouldn’t worry too much about infections.” She smiled at him as he listened silently. “If there is something out there, it would be understandable—it would be stupid if you didn’t just leave.”

At that point, he stepped away from her, tearing his eyes away and pulling his keys from his pocket. “I’m coming back.” Then he pushed out the door, letting it close behind him with a clang of metal.

The three minutes he was gone felt like a thousand years. Jemma paced the small corridor, hands on her hips, feeling her backpack bounce against her spine. Sweat and restlessness ran down her spine as she listened for any noise outside—footsteps or screaming or thumps or anything outside of the now normal silence of everyday life.

When the door was yanked open and Fitz stood there with a toolbox, Jemma let out a sigh of relief. “All good,” he said, grinning. “It’s clear out here.”

“No need to dawdle,” she said, grabbing his arm and pulling him inside, making sure the door was shut securely behind him. She wondered if there was a way to keep this door locked from the inside, but decided to worry about it later, as Fitz was already moving towards the store room. It only took her a few steps to catch up. “Does your car still work?”

Fitz knelt on the floor with a wince and opened the toolbox, examining the contents thoughtfully. “How do you think I got here?”

“I didn’t think there was a gas station within a hundred miles still in operation.”

“You don’t need them to be in operation as long as they still have some gas,” Fitz said. “And you know how to get the pumps working.”

A few pieces of hair came loose from her ponytail as she shook her head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, I have to ask, are you a conman?”

It was Fitz’s turn to look surprised as he stared at her with wide eyes. “What?”

“Again, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to offend you, I don’t mean conman in a derogatory way,” she said, holding out her hands defensively in order to placate him. “I just mean…the gun, the gas, the…breaking into the store room! If you are a grifter, clearly it is coming in handy, but I’m just curious.”

He narrowed his eyebrows at her. “I’m an engineer. Or, I mean, I was when there was society to engineer in.”

“What?”

“I got my PhD from M.I.T.” He let out a long breath, rubbing his shoulder. “I mean, I…I worked to help design non-lethal weapons for a company that had D.O.D. contracts. I guess it probably shouldn’t matter what company now, most of those people are dead, but I suppose my confidentiality contract is in place until I die, so…” He shook his head. “Yeah, I’m not a grifter.”

Jemma’s cheeks burned red. “Oh. Well, I think you’d be a very good one, if it was a goal of yours.”

He laughed, eyes closing in amusement. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

It took Fitz less than fifteen minutes to break the padlock once he set to it, the lock clattering to the ground at their feet. Jemma grinned at him, impressed, as Fitz packed up his tools and left the metal box resting flush against the wall. “I know, I know,” he said. “Conman. Let’s not put all those years of Ivy League education to waste. My mum’ll be thrilled.”

“She’ll be thrilled you’re alive,” Jemma said, opening the door to avoid seeing Fitz’s reaction.

It was dark inside the store room, none of the afternoon light from the windows able to filter in through the door. Fitz cursed under his breath, digging back into this toolbox until he found a flashlight. The room was so large that they could just barely make out the back wall when the flashlight hit it. They could see that the store room was mostly filled, as if there had been a delivery just before it had been locked up. The shelves were stocked with nonperishables and there were even pallets of what had to have been recent deliveries that hadn’t been unloaded that were covered with dusty tarps. Fitz let out a low whistle. “I think we could do pretty well here.”

“I’ll say.” Jemma couldn’t help but think of what they both weren’t saying: whoever had locked up that door must have met a pretty gruesome end not to return to this haul.

Fitz shone the light over one of the pallets in the corner, noticing a piece of paper on it that said “SUMMER—MAY.” Biting his bottom lip, he reached for Jemma and took her hand before leading them over there with the flashlight to guide them. When they reached the pallet, he handed Jemma the flashlight and took the tarp in his hands, pulling it off with a hard tug.

Her breath caught in her throat as she saw what was stacked there: battery operated lanterns, radios, fans, clocks; non-electric can openers; plastic utensils. Jemma had never been so close to crying in all of her life from seeing a package of D batteries before but she was feeling fairly close at this moment as she squeezed Fitz’s arm. “Is this camping supplies?” he asked, voice just as raw with emotion as she was feeling.

“Camping supplies, yes, it’s a big camping area, but also hurricane supplies,” she said. “After the huge storm a few years ago, they’ve been trying to get people to prepare for hurricane season. I guess they were stocking up the stores to sell out early just in case of another natural disaster.”

“God bless corporate greed.” Fitz grabbed his keys out of his pocket. There was a Swiss army knife on his key ring and he flipped out the knife, cutting through the plastic binding on the pallet. He immediately opened one of the lanterns and a package of batteries, fitting them in before handing the light to Jemma. “Let’s see what else we can find.”

They went their separate ways, Jemma setting the lantern aside so she could pull off the tarp of the pallet in front of her. Whatever was underneath it was significantly heavy and she had difficulty getting the tarp off until she put all her weight behind it. When it finally came off, she flung it to the side as she stared at her prize. Her words were stuck in her throat as she stared at the bottled water. 24-packs of spring water, at least a foot taller than her, all still sealed. This time tears did prick at the corner of her eyes, though she quickly blinked them away.

"I've got sleeping bags!" Fitz called from her left. "Sleeping bags and beach towels."

"I've got you beat," she said, voice breathy as she found herself unable to tear her gaze away from the water. She hadn't realized just how thirsty she was until she saw it in front of her and she ran her tongue over her chapped lips.

She could hear the slight shuffle of his limp as she walked over to her, then his sharp intake of breath as he spotted the water. He didn't waste any time pulling out his knife to cut through the wrap keeping the water together. When he had sawed through enough, he reached up to pull a case from the top of the pallet, setting it on the floor to rip the plastic binding open. After handing her a bottle, he grabbed one for himself and they tore the tops off.

The water was hot from being in the sweltering store room for who knows how long, but it was the most refreshing thing Jemma could ever remember drinking. It was revitalizing as it flowed down her throat and she didn't want to stop, not even to breathe. Next to her, she could hear Fitz chugging his own water down. Both of them drained their bottles in barely a minute.

As Fitz crumpled his bottle and tossed it aside, he gave her a smile. "Alright. You win."

Jemma grinned at him, then picked up her lantern to go look at his sleeping bags. They were cheap, mostly meant for camping out in the backyard or local parks; summer vacation camping rather than mountainous terrain or anything one would find in a real outdoors store. Perfectly adequate for their needs.

There wasn't much open space in the store room, but it would be enough. She gathered the tarps in her arms and walked back into the main store to shake out the dust and dirt that had accumulated with time, wrinkling her nose from the tickle of the floating particles. When she went back into the storage room, Fitz had already put together another lantern and was inserting batteries into one of the box fans. "Bloody hot in here," he grumbled as she spread out the tarps on the linoleum floors, layering them on top of each other. He gave her a curious look. "What are you doing?"

Jemma froze, then continued over to where the sleeping bags were still on their cart. "I... I'm sure that you're eager to get going now that there are such good supplies here, but you should rest your leg a bit more. At least let me bandage it again and show you how to do it. Thought we could at least use a comfortable place to sit."

"I wasn't going anywhere," Fitz said quickly. He ducked his head to turn the fan on, the blades beginning to turn and air pushing his curls back from his face. "I mean, it's gonna be dark soon. Not safe for either of us to travel. I hate driving at night with no lights on the road. Too easy for someone to see me and me not to see them."

"Oh." She smiled softly at him, then held out her hand. "May I see your knife?" He handed it to her so that she could cut through the plastic of the sleeping bags and she unzipped their bags, rolling them out on top of the tarps. Fitz took his keys back and stood to help her and soon they had built something reminiscent of a nest on the store room floor.

Jemma dragged the opened case of water to the edge of their nest, then sat down gingerly. "You know, it's not half bad." She stretched her legs out in front of her as Fitz joined her.

"Definitely slept in worse places," he said with a nod. "It was a good idea."

Pleased, she took two more bottles of water out of case and gave one to Fitz. They drank in silence for a moment before Fitz adjusted the placement of the fan, setting it at the edge of the bed so that it would blow on them and also blow the warm, stale air of the store room out the door and into the main area of the grocery store. "Is your leg swollen at all? I noticed you limping a bit." Jemma said, frustrated that she couldn't see his injuries through the material of his pants. "You didn't sprain or twist anything, did you?"

He shrugged, capping his water bottle. "Probably. It was stupid." At her concerned expression, he sighed. "I was driving and one of my tires got stuck in the mud. Had to push it out, but my foot got caught and I fell, scraped myself up pretty bad. Had some trouble driving after that, which is why I stopped when I found this place, to at least stop the bleeding, couldn't risk getting blood everywhere."

Crawling on her knees to pull a towel from the rack, she then rolled up his pant leg to get a look at the injuries. There was blood visible under the gauze and she knew she would have to replace it soon. With her eyes on him to see if there was any hesitation, Jemma slowly pushed down his sock. The skin did seem slightly puffy, but without seeing both ankles, she had nothing to compare it to. "Where does it hurt? Your ankle? Your knee?"

He shifted his weight onto his arms, and she couldn't help but notice what she would almost call trust in his eyes. "Ankle more than the knee. Slipped out from under me, it's why I fell. It's mostly okay though."

She folded the towel before gingerly lifting his leg, slipping it under his ankle. "Keep it elevated for a bit. Might help."

"Thanks, Doctor," he said, but there was no malice behind his smirk.

"I told you, two PhDs," she said, sitting back next to him with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Doctor Doctor."

She laughed under her breath, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "You're a doctor too, right? You said you got your PhD from M.I.T."

"That's right." He watched as she tucked some loose strands of hair behind her ears, chuckling as it was blown free again from the fan. "Biochem, huh?"

Jemma bit her bottom lip hard. "I was in biomedical research." Rolling to her feet, she stood up and grabbed one of the lanterns. "Are you hungry? I can go shopping, so to speak."

"I could eat," he said from behind her as she started to explore the shelves, filling her arms with non-perishable goods. There was trail mix, pretzels, marshmallow cereal bars, granola bars. She spotted some dried fruit and added it to the pile at an attempt at something with just a bit of nutritional value, even though she frowned at all the added ingredients. She used to make some of this stuff in her lab.

When she returned back to the nest, laying out everything in a neat pile, Fitz immediately reached for the marshmallow bars. "Really?" she said as he ripped open the blue foil wrapper and bit into it. "Out of everything here, you choose what has the least nutritional value?"

"Exactly what kind of nutritional value do pretzels have?"

That was, technically, a fair argument. "At least pretzels aren't pure sugar. They may not be complex carbohydrates, but the energy will last longer. I mean, those things have probably been sitting on that shelf for years. They're no better than...than Twinkies!"

Fitz scanned the pile of food, frowning. "Did you not find Twinkies?"

Groaning, she opened the bag of trail mix and poured some into her hand. At least there was some protein and the raisins had potassium. Who couldn't use more potassium in their diet when they were facing the end of the world? Jemma was a sort of glad that Fitz was out of commission. He probably would have gotten nothing but cookies and snack cakes and sugary cereal.

As Fitz opened the pretzels—probably just to bug her—he said, "I wonder how long someone could live in here."

Jemma pursed her lips as she considered it. "Probably fairly long, if no one interrupted. There's plenty of water, and as long as the batteries hold out, the fan should keep the occupant from getting overheated. There's a lot of food, though you'd probably have to supplement it with vitamins in order not to develop medical issues from the lack of fresh food. It wouldn't necessarily work as a long-term situation, but it could work for a few weeks, if not months if proper sanitation was used and water was conserved."

Fitz seemed impressed by her thoughtfulness. "Huh." Leaning back on his arms, he tossed a few pretzels into his mouth. "Something to think about."

"Is it?" she said, tucking her knees up under her chin. "Weren't you heading some place? Or were you just...driving?"

"Ah, no, I was going out west." He scratched the back of his neck. "My friend lives out there and the infection hasn't spread that far. We just happened to be at the epicenter of it all."

She nodded quickly, reaching across him for another bottle of water. "Right."

"Last I could talk to her, they were setting up blockades across the Midwest states and if that doesn't stop them, well, the mountains are a natural barrier. But I'm going to try to get past the fences and then just keep driving out to L.A."

Running her hand through her hair, she said, "Do you think you'd be able to get through?"

"They're only letting certain people through. There's supposedly this test to make sure you're not infected, it's a whole deal." Fitz rolled his eyes. "Rumor has it there's a list of names, important people and what not. Skye, that's my friend, said she'd get me on it."

Jemma raised her eyebrows. "She must have some powerful connections."

"Well, she's..." Fitz cut himself off, laughing under his breath. "You know how you thought I was a conman? I mean, I wouldn't call Skye a grifter, not to her face, but she has certain skills that are helpful in situations like this."

Resting her chin on her knees, she smiled. "Sounds like a good friend to have."

Fitz opened another marshmallow bar, grinning as Jemma rolled her eyes. "Yeah, she is. But this might not be a bad place to hang around for a while."

"Won't she miss you?"

"If she even thinks I'm still alive. I'm not even sure she expects me to make it, though I've probably got a better chance than most." Laying back with his head pillowed on his arms, he kept his eyes fixed on Jemma. "There's a lot of stuff here and I know we said we'd split it, but it's not going to fit in my car. Shame to see it go to waste." He sat up a bit, biting his bottom lip. "What were you planning on doing? Not just walking around with whatever you can fit in a backpack, surely?" When she didn't respond right away, he said, "I know you gave me the last of your water to take some bloody paracetamol."

Jemma glanced out the door of the storage room. The last rays of the setting sun were illuminating the store room and she wondered if he would accept her getting up to get some fresh bandages. "It wasn't a big deal. You needed to take the paracetamol and that has to be done with water."

"We didn't even know if we were going to find some more!"

"Really, it can cause a burning and scarring of the esophagus, especially if done repeatedly. It can be fatal. It's called pill-induced esophagitis, you can look it up if you ever get to L.A."

"Jemma!”

She sighed heavily, closing her eyes and covering her face with her hands. "Really. Water isn't that big of a deal for me. I...my lab, where my lab is, our complex has a lot of facilities and we have our own water supply, it's part of the work that the company does. It's off the grid from the main city water supply. Obviously no one has been working there, but the reservoir had a large supply and I’ve had access." At his disbelieving expression, she rolled her eyes. "I'm a biochemist, I know how to purify my own water, Fitz. I could purify and drink my own urine and it would actually be better for me than what came out of these bottles, if you could believe it."

The face he made was hilarious in its repulsion, but she couldn't seem to get a laugh out. "I'm not sure I want to believe it," he said, glancing over his shoulder at the hundreds of water bottles stacked behind them. "So, what, you really are just going to grocery stores with a backpack, looking for food?"

"I'm supposed to catch a boat," she said. The words came out uncertain because, well, she was still uncertain, wrapping her hands around her neck anxiously. "In two days. At the harbor. Back to England."

Fitz watched her carefully. "That's impossible. They're not letting any boats in and certainly nothing out."

"You've never met Hunter." Jemma smirked, licking her lips. "I'm not sure where he got the yacht from, had to cost millions, but whoever he's borrowing it from is surely getting a cut of the money. He's ferrying those that can afford it over to Europe, to some port where they're not checking so heavily. This is his fifth trip." It didn't seem wise to mention that he was only coming back the fifth time because she hadn't gotten on the other four.

"And you're one of them?" he said slowly. "One of the ones that can afford it?"

She snorted, shaking her head. "God no. His ex-wife is my best friend. She was already working overseas when this whole mess started, over in Budapest. She told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn't bring me back over there, he wouldn't live long enough to spend any of his piles of money." Smiling fondly to herself, she said, "Bobbi's a bit like your Skye. She has skills that are useful in scenarios like these."

Fitz looked down at his leg, checking the bandage, pulling at the edge of the tape. "So you're just...you were just planning to get on the boat and getting out of here?"

Checking her watch against the light, Jemma said, "It doesn't leave for another two days. I needed something to get me through. I was running low on supplies a few days ago, so I just went looking and found this place."

He nodded slowly, then pushed the granola bars at her until she took one and unwrapped it, eating the whole thing in two bites. "What were you planning on doing? Just going back to—to England, I assume?"

"My family's all back in Sheffield." Her mum was probably going nuts; she didn't take stress very well. "I think Bobbi would have tried to contact them, tell them that she was trying to get me home. But I guess I was just going to get over to Europe and see what would happen next." She hugged her legs tightly, curling into a smaller ball. "Didn't have much of a plan beyond that."

"It's hard to." He tossed the bag of dried banana chips back and forth between his hands before finally ripping them open and holding it out to her. She smiled at him before taking a handful, nibbling on them slowly. "You don't know what to expect, what's even going on over there. We've been basically stranded here. I think you're right not to have any plan because it's just going to get messed up anyway."

"Do you not have a plan? For meeting your friend?"

Fitz shrugged. "Just try to get there alive. I mean, I have some ideas, what I would do if I run into certain types of troubles, but I don't have a set idea of what I'll do for certain things at certain times."

She understood the sentiment. She certainly didn't have a set idea for much of anything these days--not even if she was going to make it to the harbor. Her only idea so far had been to get enough food for her body not to completely fall into starvation mode.

Tapping his fingers against his knee, he said, "I'm not sure my mum knows I'm alive." The words came out in a rush, as if he wasn't sure if he wanted to say them. Jemma wasn't sure how, or even if she should react. He tilted his head towards her, his eyes watery and so, so blue. "I...I haven't been able to talk to her in weeks, not since all the phone lines and everything went down. Was able to rig something up for a little while, con man and all that, but still. She probably thinks I'm dead. And there's nothing I can do about it. I was all she ever had and..." He trailed off, clearly getting choked up.

Without thinking, Jemma reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, letting her fingers curl tightly around him. "She'll be that much happier when you get to L.A. and can let her know that you're okay," she whispered, moving closer to him.

When his hand came up, she thought he was going to push her away, but instead he covered her hand with his, his palm warm against her skin. Lifting off her knees, she moved to sit next to him, their sides just barely touching. The fan blew the edge of her shirt up and she shivered as it hit the still drying sweat on her skin.

“My roommate—we used to watch zombie movies together sometimes, play video games and discuss what we’d do during this actual scenario,” Fitz said. “His family has this remote cabin in the woods; they’re politicians, it’s sort of their own Camp David type thing. We always said we’d go there, stock up on supplies like we’ve got here, hunt our own game, ride out the storm.

“When the storm did come, I just came home one day and he was gone.” Fitz rubbed his eyes tiredly. “His clothes were gone, the .45 he kept under the bed. He’d cleaned out the pantry. At least he’d taken his dog, wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d left the poor thing behind, but he hadn’t.” Setting his jaw, Fitz said, “He took off and left me and I realized that we really all were on our own and that’s why we were all going to die.”

There was nothing she could think to say to that. She had no idea what it felt like to be abandoned, left behind. Part of her wanted to wrap her arm around Fitz, think to comfort him, but she watched the straightness of his back and the squareness of his shoulders and decided otherwise. She sighed.

"What would you be doing now?" Jemma said. She poured some trail mix in her hand, separating the raisins and peanuts and granola and chocolate into separate piles. "If everything wasn't what it was? What would your day be like?"

Fitz stared out at the fading sun before looking at his watch, laughing darkly. "Honestly? Probably still be working. For another few hours, even. Might stop for dinner, get takeaway into the lab if it were possible. I was always probably too into my work, got my degree really young." Tapping his fingers against his knee, he said, "Never got out too much. Sometimes I would hang out with my roommate, but he always had things to do, like dates or whatever and that was never..." He looked quickly over at Jemma, then rubbed the back of his neck. "I tended to stay home alone. Not sure if I should regret that, now that the world is ending."

Sighing in understanding, she said, "We're a lot the same, you and I. Except the world is ending and I still can't find my way out of the lab." Before he could question that, she bent over his leg, rolling his pants out of the way again. The corners of the tape had come loose already and she could see spots of blood through the gauze. "I should bandage this again before we settle in for the night."

Shifting up to a better sitting position, Fitz nodded. "You want to go get some supplies, Doc?"

"I'd rather do it out there, if you don't mind, actually," Jemma said, standing up. "That way if there's any spilling, we can bleach it and we don't have to deal with the smell in here all night."

"Yeah, makes sense," he said, rolling to his knees. Jemma did her best not to giggle as he shook out his leg, which had clearly fallen asleep, instead extending an arm to him to offer him help up. There was no hesitation before he took her hand and he balanced a bit on her shoulder, bouncing his foot against the floor as he tried to force some feeling back into it. As she bit the inside of her cheek in amusement, he glared at her. “Oh, shut up.”

Shaking her head innocently, she widened her eyes at him. “I said nothing.” Trying not to displace him, she bent down slowly to pick up a lantern and her backpack. At his look of hesitancy at her backpack, she said, “I think we should bring some garbage bags, paper towels, things to keep it clean in here. Maybe some of your first aid supplies. That’s one of the few things we don’t have back here, I guess they hadn’t gotten the order or whatever.” She slung the backpack over her shoulder, then also leaned over for his towel, laying that over his shoulder. “This way we don’t have to keep our hands full.”

They went shopping for their supplies before going to the first aid aisle, getting thick paper towels and garbage bags, more wet washcloths and hand sanitizer. Fitz wondered how much toilet paper he could possibly fit into his car. Then they swung around the front of the store to grab a plastic shopping bag to use for biohazard. He rolled up his pant leg and pillowed his leg on top of the towel while she gathered the supplies. Fitz ground his teeth together as she peeled off the bandages, leaning his head back against the shelves as the tape tugged at his skin. “Well, it already looks better than it did when I first saw it.” Jemma tossed the dirty bandages into the bag. “Look what can be achieved when you have a real doctor.”

“Very funny,” he said through gritted teeth, but the corner of his mouth twitched up a bit.

As she laid out her tape and gauze, she said, “Do you want me to show you how to do this properly yourself?”

“Show me tomorrow.” Jemma raised her eyebrows at his immediate answer and Fitz shook his head. “I mean, I just meant it’s late and dark, can barely see in here, so—”

“I’ll show you tomorrow, Fitz.” She wondered if he could see her smile as she squeezed the Neosporin on a piece of gauze, spreading it over his wound. Fitz played assistant, handing her things at her request. It was easier this time, even despite the only light being provided by the lantern at her knee. He flinched less and the lift provided by the towel put the wound closer to eye level.

When she finished bandaging him up, Fitz rolled his pant leg down. “Thanks, Jemma.”

“You’re welcome,” she murmured, throwing the trash into the biohazard bag. She threw the leftover medical supplies into her backpack before standing and scouring the shelves for aspirin. The few bottles she found also went to her bag as Fitz used the shelves as an anchor to get to his feet.

“Anything else we need?” he said, standing at her shoulder and scanning the shelves with her.

Pursing her lips, Jemma shook her head and shouldered her backpack. “I don’t think so. Nothing that we have to grab right—”

She cut herself off when she heard a sudden noise at the front of the store. The two of them froze and Fitz’s hand came up to hold her arm. She stopped breathing as she listened hard, trying to distinguish the noise between that which was normal nighttime sound and that which wasn’t. Soon she realized that someone—something—was trying to pull the doors open the way she had earlier. Then she heard a distinctly masculine voice talking to someone else and she knew it was someone uninfected; likely several uninfected people and she suddenly felt all the more terrified.

Instinctively, she moved closer to Fitz and his arms came to wrap around her at the same time. As his arms wrapped around her back, he pressed the two of them up against the shelves of the aisle, hopefully out of sight of the group who were trying to get into their store. “I’ve got you,” he breathed into her ear. “I got you, I won’t let them hurt you.”

It was a comfort that she wasn’t sure she deserved, but she clung to him all the same. Swallowing against her dry throat, she leaned as close to his ear as she possibly could and whispered, “I have a gun.” He stared at her in shock but she just nodded firmly. “Right side pocket of my bag.”

She shivered as his left hand slowly left her back and moved towards the zipper at her hip, moving it down and finding the pistol that she had been trying not to have to think about all day. His fingers tightened around it as he pulled it out and his other arm squeezed her waist. At the door, the man and his companions were still having trouble getting it open, which was worrying her: either they were incredibly weak, incredibly drunk, or incredibly sick, none of which were going to be good for her and Fitz.

Fitz nudged her face with his, then nodded back towards the store room. Trying to take a deep breath, Jemma nodded. She refused to let go of him as they moved and it seemed like Fitz had similar ideas, stepping in time with her but never releasing her waist or lowering the gun. Their shoes sounded too loud to Jemma’s ears, each shuffle and squeak like a cacophony of sound that surely echoed outside of the boundaries of the four walls around them. _Don’t come in_ , she prayed silently, eyes squeezes shut. _Please, please, let us just get to the store room._

Miraculously, they had left the door to the store room open and Fitz pushed her through it before going through himself, pulling it closed silently. Jemma immediately grabbed him and hugged him tightly. Fitz cupped the back of her head as he held her close, his breathing heavily. When he finally released her, his hand came around to rest on her cheek. “You should, um, sit down or something. I’m gonna see if I can rig something for this door.”

There was no lock on the inside, most likely originally for safety reasons, but that only made them not safe. Jemma watched as Fitz found a length of rope from one of the pallets and wrapped it around the door knob, tying it around the closest shelf. Then he shoved his smallest screwdriver in the lock of the door so that the handle couldn’t be turned. “Smart thinking,” she whispered as he joined her on the pile of sleeping bags. “Maybe they’ll think it’s locked.”

“It’s what I’m hoping,” he said.

In that light, so close to the lanterns, she could see how pale he was and her heart dropped to her stomach. They hadn’t remembered to grab the towel from the aisle and she wondered if it would give them away. She climbed to her feet and made her way back to the pallets, grabbing another towel. “Here,” she said, lifting his right leg and folding it underneath. “You should elevate it again.” Then, as a secondary thought, she grabbed a handful of towels and stuck them in the small crack under the door of the store room. “So we don’t have to worry about anyone seeing the lights,” she told Fitz.

“Right. Should have thought of that.”

Making an executive decision that Fitz needed something for pain, as well as something to eat with it, she grabbed the aspirin bottle out of her bag and handled it to him before going to search the shelves for some food. She returned with beef jerky, cheese crackers, and a warm bottle of water. Fitz was sitting with her pistol in his hand, running his fingers over the barrel. “You didn’t tell me you had this,” he said evenly. She wanted him to look at her, to be able to judge him by his eyes if not by his tone, but he refused, his gaze locked on the gun.

Kneeling next to him, she shook two white pills into her hand and held them out to him. “I didn’t think I should.”

He took them from her, looking like he was going to just swallow them before glancing up at her face and then picking up the water bottle she had set by his leg. “I wouldn’t have told me either.”

“It’s not because I don’t trust you.” Jemma rested her hands on the back of her neck anxiously. “I just…I didn’t want you to think that I was telling you as a threat.”

“You don’t have to justify yourself, Jemma.”

“I didn’t think the gun was necessary.”

“I’m glad we have it,” Fitz said. He double checked that the safety was on and set it aside. “It’s a good thing, really.”

Jemma wasn’t sure that she believed him, but nodded despite the lump in her throat. “Eat something,” she forced out, handing him the beef jerky. “You need to keep your iron up.”

He tore a piece of beef jerky off with his teeth, then pulled another piece out of the bag and handed it to her like a peace offering. She smiled at him and nibbled on it, but couldn’t keep her eyes off the door. Her heart wouldn’t go back to a natural rhythm; it felt like it was going to beat out of her chest.

Feeling too restless and nervous to sit there and do nothing, she unloaded the new contents of her backpack on to a nearby shelf. They had managed to fit quite a lot in there and she laid it out in the most organized manner she possibly could. She could feel Fitz’s eyes on her, boring a hole in her back. She hoped he didn’t see her hands shake.

Her skin felt dry and powdery from the latex gloves and she picked up a package of the washcloths, carrying it back to the blankets. Slowly, she ran one over her hands, lingering in the spaces between her fingers. The coolness of the cloth felt good and she wiped around her wrist before she ran it up her forearm, into the dip of her elbow, then as high as her shirt sleeve would allow before switching arms and doing the other one.

When she reached for another washcloth, she found Fitz staring at her. He blushed, then nodded at the package of washcloths. “My, uh, my hands are sticky,” he said.

“Sorry,” she murmured, sliding it over to him after plucking one for herself. She dragged the washcloth across her throat, dipping just under her shirt to wipe her collarbones, then around to the back of her neck. Her heartbeat was starting to slow back to normal now, her breathing evening out and she allowed herself to shut her eyes to wipe down her face.

When she looked up again, Fitz was just starting to wipe his hands, scrubbing furiously over his palms and his forearms before wiping down his own face and neck. He even took the washcloth and ran it over his head, sending his curls even more askew. Jemma couldn’t help but giggle.

“You alright?” he said, grabbing her used washcloths and balling them up with his. He glanced around, and, upon failing to find a proper place to put them, threw them in the corner.

Jemma rolled her eyes. “Is that how you clean up at your house?”

“Well, at my house, I have a bin.” He shrugged. “I’m not really gonna go out there and get one.”

A lump grew in her throat and she let out a slow breath, panic growing in her chest again. She hadn’t realized he was reaching for her until he placed his hand on her back and she jumped. “It’ll be okay,” Fitz said softly. “I’m not gonna let anyone… It’ll be okay.”

Nodding, Jemma couldn’t help but believe him. Seeking his comfort, she leaned into his side, putting her head on his chest so could listen to his heartbeat. It was just as rapid as hers and somehow that was reassuring. “Thank you, Fitz.” He just made a soft sound of acknowledgement as he rubbed his hand in circles across her back.

As she sat pressed against his side, they watched the door in silence, both listening for any further signs that anyone had been able to get into their store. She yawned against his neck, then blushed, covering her face with her hands. “Gosh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” he said, brushing an errant piece of hair off her cheek. “Why don’t you get some rest?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” she said, pressing her face against his shoulder.

His thumb stroked the back of her neck. “Why not?”

Pulling back so she could look him in the eye, she said, “Well, what about you? Aren’t you tired too?”

“I couldn’t sleep, not now,” he said, shrugging. “But I might be able to later and it’ll be nice to know that I’ll have a well-rested look out.” It must have been clear that she was wavering because he stood up and went to one of the pallets in the back, grabbing a towel, folding it, and sticking it as a pillow at what she supposed he decided was the head of their bed. He patted it and sat down on that end of the sleeping bags. “Come on, you should try to sleep.”

Sighing, Jemma kicked off her boots and crawled over to him. “You’re sure? I won’t be abandoning you or something like that?”

“Course not. I’ll eat something, keep watch.” He smiled at her as she settled down, pulling one of the sleeping bags over herself. She honestly hadn’t realized how tired she had been until just now, all the adrenaline fading out of her system. “You have nothing to worry about.”

Snuggling into the towel, she watched him as her eyes struggled to close against her will. "If you get bored, there are books in my bag."

Fitz shook his head in disbelief, scoffing at her. "So you've got no food or water, but you'll take up space and weight in your pack by carrying around books?"

She shrugged, smiling despite herself as she finally closed her eyes. "I have my priorities." The sound of his laugh lulled her to sleep; she couldn't remember the last time she had felt so protected.

When she woke up, it took her a moment to get over her disorientation. The room was dark; only a single lit lantern sat next to Fitz as he read one of her books. She made a small noise as she stretched, the sleeping bag sliding off her hips as she pointed her feet and curled her toes. Fitz looked up from the page and smiled at her, sticking his finger in his spot and setting it aside as he looked her over. "You alright then?"

"Yes, I'm feeling quite good, actually," she said softly. "I needed that. Thanks." Not bothering to sit up yet, she arched her back and stretched her arms over her head. She nodded at the book. "What are you reading?"

" _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_. Interesting choice."

With absolutely no regret in her choice of travel gear, she traced her fingers across the words on the cover. "It was the only one I had in paperback."

Biting his bottom lip, he said, "Want to know a secret? I've got all of mine. Hard cover, first UK editions, in my car. Couldn't bear to leave 'em behind." Huffing a laugh, he shook his head. "Priorities."

"What's your favorite?"

" _Prisoner of Azkaban_. Always had a soft spot for the Marauders. _Goblet of Fire_ yours then?"

She shook her head. " _Order of the Phoenix_. Dumbledore's Army and all that. But I do quite like _Goblet of Fire_ , I've always felt that Hermione was very underappreciated for all that she wanted to do for the house elves, even if she was misguided in her efforts."

The look he gave her was full of so much blind affection that she couldn't breathe for a minute. "That actually doesn't surprise me, not one bit." And Jemma wasn't surprised when Fitz leaned down, only a moment's hesitation, to press his lips to hers. She thought she should be scared or nervous or confused, but all she felt was her heart beating so loud she could barely hear herself think as she buried her hands in his hair, holding his face against hers.

His lips were chapped but she didn't care as she ran her tongue over them, feeling his groan in every part of her body. He held himself over her with both of his hands, but she could feel him trembling as he kissed her hungrily, all teeth and tongue, as if this might be the last kiss he would ever have. Maybe it would be. Jemma didn't want it to be. She wanted to kiss him a thousand more times, locked in this room, with only a lousy $10 lantern to light their way.

When he finally pulled back, his eyes were wide and wild, and he was breathing heavy like they had run from something. She was sure that she looked similarly wrecked, her nails digging into the skin of his neck where his curls had grown long. Fitz closed his eyes and rested his forehead against hers for a minute, panting hard before trying to find his words. "Jemma—"

"Don't say you're sorry," she interrupted, wrapping her hand around his upper arm.

"Okay," he said immediately. "Good. Because I'm not." He leaned back onto his knees, attempting to give her some space but she sat up, following him and kissing him gently. This time his hands cupped her face, thumbs stroking her cheekbones tenderly as if she were as fragile as glass and he was desperate to keep her unbroken. Jemma clung to his shirt, head swimming from her quick movement, though mostly from his taste, his touch, his smell. What should have been a revolting combination of musty storeroom and dried sweat was heady and intoxicating and even after she broke the kiss, Jemma pressed her face against his shoulder and breathed him in deeply.

When she started to regain control of her logical facilities again, she looked up at him, still breathing hard. "Are you...are you tired?"

"Not anymore."

After smiling against him, she sat back and tugged out her ponytail holder, running her fingers through her hair. She slipped it onto her wrist as the brown waves settled in front of her face. “Really, you can sleep. I can keep watch for a few hours.”

He shook his head, reaching for something behind him in the dark. “Now why would I want to sleep when I found this?” He held up a rectangular box and in the dim lighting it took her a moment to make it out: a game of Monopoly.

“Where on earth did you get this?” she said, taking it from him, her fingers sticking to the cellophane.

“Found it on one of the back shelves. There were some travel games, kid stuff, but then I found this beauty.” He grinned at her, leaning his arms on his crossed legs. “Don’t you want to find out what will end first, the world or a game of Monopoly?”

Jemma threw her head back and laughed long and hard, shoulders shaking with glee and mirth. She couldn’t remember the last time she had really been able to laugh. Even before all of this mess, it hadn’t been a regular occurrence in her life. When Fitz raised an amused eyebrow at her, she tore off the cellophane, leaving the box on the floor as she shook the top off. “I would like to be the thimble. And the banker.”

“I’m always the racecar,” he said, helping her unwrap the new set and looking for his small metal piece in particular. As he pantomimed driving the token across the game board, she couldn’t believe she had worried about whether or not this man was going to shoot her not twelve hours ago.

She sorted out, then handed out the money as he finished setting up the board. “This is the first game of Monopoly I’ve ever played when I didn’t feel like anyone was going to cheat,” Fitz said as he laid out his money on his side of the board.

Jemma raised an eyebrow at him. “Why? Because you know I’m a trustworthy person now?”

“Well, I mean, that, but Monopoly is a game that will get people killed during normal times. Hate to see what it’ll do to people who are already pretty trigger happy.”

She wanted to just roll her eyes, but she couldn’t help silently agree with him as she handed him the dice. “Go ahead and roll.”

It was hard to know how long they played for with no natural lighting and no clocks to guide them; they both had watches, but neither of them bothered to check as they bought properties, and went to jail, and passed “GO” to collect their $200. Fitz, surprisingly, had a lot of insight to the history of the game and shared the trivia. “Marven Gardens is actually a misspelling of an actual Marvin, with an ‘I,’ Gardens in Atlantic City,” he said as he moved his token. “And in classic editions, like this one, the bank has $15,140, so I’ll know if some if missing.”

She laughed as he winked at her. “Are you sure you’re Scottish? How do you know all of this?”

“My mum is into random Americana,” he said as he paid for Illinois Avenue. “She was also into American telly—mostly soap operas. The JFK murder. Area 51. I wanted to be an astronaut for a while, studied some aerospace engineering in college for fun.”

Smiling as she wrapped her arms around herself, she said, “My parents just like to watch polo at the club. Not play, mind you, just watch.”

“You ever play?”

“Oh, no. Rode a bit as a child, but then there was science to do.” She twirled the dice in her hand for a bit before rolling and moving the thimble to a railroad. “Science always came first.”

“Know that feeling,” he said, stretching his arms over his head and leaning back against the blankets. “Used to make little gadgets all the time, drove my mum crazy. They all worked at least.”

As she watched his eyes droop, Jemma kneeled over him with her arms crossed over her chest. “You’re tired.”

“’m fine.”

“You were distracting me with Monopoly.”

“I was distracting myself with Monopoly.” He opened one eye to look at her. “And you. Distracting myself with you. You’re a good distraction.”

Smiling despite herself, Jemma said, “You need to get some rest. Just how long have you been awake?” When Fitz drummed his fingertips together, she shook her head. “Yeah, if you have to think about it, it’s been too long.” He’d probably been driving for days or sleeping in his car before finding this place. She turned off all lantern but one and pulled a sleeping bag over him. “Sleep.”

The material of the sleeping bag made a sound as he wriggled underneath it. “Can’t,” he muttered into the towel underneath his head. “Can’t sleep.”

There were layers of frustration, desperation, and fear in his voice and her heart clenched in her chest. “Do you…do you want me to lay with you?” It took a moment before he nodded. Jemma grabbed her gun and put it within easy reach of her side of the bed before crawling under the bedding next to him, sharing the same sleeping bag. She found his hand, pulling it up to her chest. She traced his fingers with hers, fascinated by how long they were, the span of his palm, the callouses that had no doubt been built up over years of working in the lab.

When she caught him staring at her, she threaded their fingers together, kissing his knuckles. “Go to sleep. I’ll be right here.”

He raised their combined hands to stroke her cheekbone, then reached out to wrap his other arm around her waist, pulling her in closer. “Right here?” he whispered against her ear, his breath hot against her skin.

She shivered, leaning her body into his. “Right here.”

Kissing the side of her nose, he said, “Tell me about your job. You mentioned dendrotoxin before. Is that what you were working on?”

Her body went still and she had to remind her lungs to take in air. Swallowing hard, she leaned in, brushing her nose against his until she found his lips, kissing him slowly. “That doesn’t sound like sleeping.”

“That doesn’t feel like sleeping,” he murmured against her mouth. His arm held her tighter as she bit playfully at his bottom lip. Fitz licked his way into her mouth and she felt lightning down her spine as she wrapped her hand around the back of his head, holding him exactly where she wanted him. Her leg hitched up over his hip and his hand wrapped tightly around her thigh; she unconsciously pressed against him and they both shuddered.

Jemma’s mouth grew more insistent over his, drawing her tongue over the back of his teeth. She could feel his chest heaving against hers, the slide of thin cotton against thin cotton. At one time, he sucked a path down her neck as he ran his hand up her thigh and over her arse before settling on her lower back, his ring and pinky finger under her t-shirt and touching her bare skin. As he kissed at the hollow of her throat, Jemma couldn’t help undulating her hips against his and he hissed against her skin. She could feel his erection through his pants.

“Jemma, Jemma,” he begged, kissing his way up to her lips. “I’m…god, I’m never going to be able to sleep, if you…”

She apologized quickly, moving both hands to cup his face as she kissed his cheeks, forehead, chin, nose. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please, Fitz, sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.” At his obvious reluctance, she carded her fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp with the pads of her fingers. “Trust me.”

Nodding his head twice, he leaned into her hands and finally closed his eyes. Within a few minutes, he was asleep. Jemma kept stroking his head for a long time, trying to ease whatever might plague him in the night, but also because she liked doing it. She liked listening to his rhythmic breathing, feeling the rise and fall of his chest, watching his face look the slightest bit less tense.

She had liked kissing him too. Her body had responded to him instantly, was still responding to him, she realized as she gingerly removed her leg from over his hip and pressed her legs together to ease the dull ache there. If he hadn’t have stopped, Jemma wasn’t sure if she would have been able to.

When she was sure that he was sleeping soundly—or as soundly as he could be, given their situation—Jemma slowly extracted herself from him. She turned off all the lanterns but the one she kept right next to her and turned the fan on low so as not to waste the battery; other than just very recently, it hadn’t been warm in there, and even then it had been their own doing. Smiling to herself as she moved the Monopoly game to the side, careful not to disrupt anything, she had to agree that it had been a very good distraction. Not as good as hers, but still very good.

Sitting next to him on the sleeping bag, she wondered what it would be like to stay here forever. It couldn’t really be forever, of course, but it was a thought. One Jemma didn’t mind entertaining sitting here in the dark, her knees tucked up tightly to her chest. Just her and Fitz, taking care of each other. Making each other happy.

Jemma knew if she didn’t show up at the harbor, she’d never get the opportunity again. Hunter had already told her that this was the last chance. He’d broken into the lab, urged her to come with him to wherever he was hiding—he’d already gone to her apartment and taken her stuff to the yacht, which was an egregious violation of privacy, but she had found herself past caring. Maybe the stuff in her backpack and clothes on her back were all she needed, all she really deserved. He’d warned her that the entire Atlantic seaboard in both Europe and Africa were threatening to close ports and there weren’t enough people to bribe over there or enough people willing to pay back here to justify making another trip. This was it, no matter what Bobbi said.

If she didn’t show up this time, he couldn’t come back for her. Not again.

She could feel the hours ticking away as she sat there, contemplating her choices for the next day and the ones that had led her here to this room with this man. Reaching behind her, she started to comb through her hair with her fingers, each tangle a mess that she had yet to unravel.

She hadn’t realized that Fitz was awake until he reached for her, groping blindly across their bed. “Jemma?”

“I’m right here, Fitz.” She held her hand out so he could find it and he immediately threaded their fingers together, holding her tightly. She could hear him relax back against his towel-pillow.

“What’s wrong?” he said, tugging on her gently, but she refused to follow him down.

She shook her head, the movement casting shadows in the few places that there had been light. “I’m just thinking. You didn’t sleep for very long.”

He ran his thumb over the knuckles on her hand, tracing out the bumps and grooves. “Slept enough. I’m okay. Are you?”

“You know…you know it’s my fault, right?” She almost choked on the words, but forced herself to spit them out like acid. “All of this.”

“Jemma, I don’t—”

“I worked at a biomedical research facility,” she said, barreling on, fairly sure that if she stopped now she’d never say the words to another living person again. “I was working on a drug to treat Alzheimer’s. My mentor—my, my hero, she had Alzheimer’s, a pretty advanced stage. My research was progressing rather well, I had high hopes to take it to trials soon. But then my boss came and confiscated all of my research. That’s…that’s never happened to me before.”

Fitz sat up, wrapping his arm around her back. He kissed the back of her shoulder before resting his cheek there. His presence gave her the strength to continue. “You’ve heard of Patient Zero?” she said, voice wobbling. “His name was…his name was Donnie Gill. I knew him. He was a student, engineering like you.” Jemma squeezed her eyes shut, holding his hand as a lifeline as she couldn’t help but imagine a young Fitz. “He was brilliant, was on scholarship, but used to do drug trials to help supplement his income for his studies. They tried to cover up his death and the circumstances surrounding it, but I looked it up. They gave him my drug, Fitz. My drug killed him, my drug started all of this.”

“Jemma, no.” He put a hand on her cheek, trying to force her to look at him, but she was immovable, like a stone. Instead, he got up to kneel in front of her, staring at her anxiously as he stroked her cheeks. “Jemma, this wasn’t your fault.”

It was impossible to blink away the tears when he looked at her so tenderly, though he was quick to wipe them away. “But it was. I saw the research before they had it destroyed. It was my drug.”

“Your drug that they administered before it was ready!” Fitz leaned over to kiss her arm where it was wrapped around her leg, tucking her body into a ball. “Your drug that they probably messed with beyond recognition of what it originally was. Jemma, I am sorry that they took something that should have been beautiful and healing and turned it into…something else, but that’s not your fault.” He ran a hand through her loose curls as her eyes fell shut, tears dripping down her nose. “Have you been carrying this around with you all this time?”

With a sniffle and a shrug, she said, “After Donnie died, I had to find out what happened to him. All the paperwork just had my drug, GH-325, and I…I knew that I had done it.” Her shoulders finally fell as she cried silently into her hands.

Sitting next to her, Fitz wrapped his arm around her shoulders and drew her against his chest, where she buried her head and sobbed. For a long time he stroked her hair as she cried, pressing kisses to the top of her head. She felt small and fragile, and like he was doing his best to hold her together so that she didn’t completely break apart.

Holding on to her shoulders, Fitz eased her back far enough that she could see his face. “I need you to know that this is not your fault,” he said. “You would never do anything like this. When we first met, your first thought was to take care of me, to heal me. You didn’t know I wasn’t a threat, you could have pulled your own gun on me at any time to take me out, but you didn’t even think about it. You just…you fixed up my leg. You didn’t have to do that, but you saw someone in pain, someone who needed your help, and you helped.” Her eyes grew wide as he talked and she chewed her bottom lip. “Jemma, I will never believe that you would intentionally hurt anyone or even allow anyone to intentionally hurt anyone. This wasn’t you. It wasn’t. You’re not that person.”

As the tears ran down her cheek, she leaned into him and kissed him hard, her arms going around his neck. It was wet from her crying but Fitz didn’t seem to mind as he cradled her close. He leaned back onto the sleeping bag, carrying her with him until she was lying on his chest and he drew the blankets up over them. They would kiss every so often, long and tender, short and sweet, as if they had to keep reminding the other that they were there.

“Is that why you were always in your lab?” he said, kissing her cheek, her neck, her collarbone. “Is that why you never got on the boat?” Her breath caught in her throat and he rubbed her back. “There’s no reason for someone to come back a fifth time unless someone refused to get on the first four times. Especially to an abandoned port where there’s probably no one left to pay for the transportation.”

Jemma pressed her face to his chest. “I was hoping that if I…if I had enough time, maybe I could fix it.” Her voice was thick and muffled. “I created it, maybe I could uncreate it. Make an antiserum of sorts. But I was running out of resources and—”

“And testing it would be suicide.” Fitz held her so tightly that it hurt, but she pressed herself back against his grip. “Please, tell me you never—”

“I never tested it. I never searched for test subjects or anything like that, it was all computer models as long as the generator at the lab held out.” When he relaxed beneath her, she leaned up to give him a soft kiss. “I wouldn’t do that.”

He nuzzled her cheek, lips dancing against her skin. “You’re getting on that boat.” When she sighed against him, he said, “You’re going back to England, and you’re going to find resources there where you’re safe and you can think.”

“What about you?” she started to say, but he interrupted her with a kiss and she got lost in the feeling of his tongue against her lips, coaxing a moan out of her. Jemma kissed him slowly, leaning into him as she felt a sigh in his chest. Fitz’s hands splayed across her back, one moving down to wrap low around her waist, fingers twisting in at her hip. Her loose hair fell down to tickle his cheek and he laughed when she tried to blow it away.

When that didn’t work, she rolled on to her back, dragging him with her. Her hair spread out over the sleeping bag as Fitz positioned one knee between her legs and the other outside of her hip. Mouthing against her throat, he twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. Jemma shivered as he nipped at her collarbone. Her fingers traced down his spine, counting the vertebrae until she reached the dip of his lower back. The goosebumps on his arms were visible to her as she leaned over to kiss his palm.

The growl deep in his chest vibrated into hers as he sucked on her bottom lip. She grabbed at the back of his shirt as she licked as his lip, begging him for a deeper kiss. Refusing to let him completely control this, her other hand went to his head, fisting his curls and tilting his head exactly where she wanted it. His groan in her mouth made her rock down on the leg between her knees.

Fitz went completely still before he started absolutely ravaging her mouth. She could barely keep up as he kissed her breathless and if she had been able to come up with any coherent thought, she would wonder if he was pressing his knee into her on purpose. Her hand slipped under his shirt and she traced nonsensical patterns across the soft, sweaty skin of his lower back. The muscles flexed under her hand as he pressed his erection against her hip.

A sigh escaped her as she kissed his chin. She was tired, certainly, but every time his skin touched hers was like a spark of electricity throughout her entire body. Fitz was clearly a much stronger creature that she was if he could have fallen asleep earlier because Jemma was fairly certain she would never sleep again if he didn’t keep his knee where it was she could grind against it.

She wasn’t a hermit: she loved her job, but that didn’t mean she didn’t go on dates or have boyfriends. No one she loved, she knew that much, but she had thought at the time that they had been serious; looking back, it was obvious that she hadn’t been. All of their faces blurred together in her mind as she rolled through their names like a data stream. She wondered if any of them were alive, but only as a curiosity. If she had the ability to call and see if any of them were alive, she didn’t think she would do it.

Jemma had never needed someone, needed to feel them inside of her before they left her life, urged for that final meeting of bodies and souls. Not before she met Fitz. She didn’t want to say goodbye to him until it happened. Not when she was so sure she’d never see him again.

Rolling Fitz on to his back again, she kissed eagerly at his neck. His shirt had ridden up from her earlier ministrations and she sucked on his Adam’s apple as she reached for his bare waist. Breaking her mouth away from his neck with a wet noise, she held on to his waist as she sat up so her arse was pressed to his lap. “Jesus, Jemma,” he said, throwing his arm over his eyes. When his breathing had slowed to manageable levels, he put his arms on the tops of her thighs, rubbing lightly through her pants. “Hey.”

She thought she would have something to say, a question or a request or a declaration. But her mouth was dry and her mind was blank as she stared at him, at the affection in his eyes and the light smile in the corner of his lips. Swallowing hard, Jemma reached down and grabbed the ends of her shirt and pulled the garment over her head, dropping it carelessly to the side.

Fitz’s hands tightened on her leg as he took in the sight of her. She brought her arms down to her sides slowly, desperate not to hide behind crossed arms or hunched shoulders. Even when her bra strap slid down, she didn’t make any more to return it to her shoulder. Fitz cupped her waist to hold her steady as he sat up, bringing their chests and faces and closer together. Running a finger down her bare arm sent a whole host of shivers down Jemma’s back and Fitz smiled triumphantly before pressing a kiss down the entire length of her collarbone.

She hummed happily at his ministrations, leaning back on her hands as he licked over her shoulder. His touch was delicate against her sides as he wrapped one hand around her waist and kissed underneath her ear. “Jemma…I…Why?”

“Because I don’t want you to stop touching me,” she said, just centimeters away from his mouth, her lips just brushing his at certain words. He was breathing heavy and she could feel it against her skin.

Immediately, Fitz pulled back and reached for the bottom of his black shirt, instantly losing the thin tank underneath it as well. Jemma’s curiosity was made for a man like this and her hands began to map out every inch of him before he took her hand and tugged her forward for a kiss of longing. They were both on their knees now, legs alternating as Jemma wrapped her arms around his neck to keep Fitz’s close and he kissed her like she would suddenly disappear.

Both of his hands were on her back, one sketching the curve of her spine with the pads of his fingers, the other just resting on her bra strap as if waiting on an invitation. Smiling to herself, she tugged on the lobe of his ear with her teeth. “Go on then, Fitz,” she said, voice breathy with anticipation.

He was excellent at following instructions and her bra came unhooked faster that she could have imagined. “I work with a lot of fasteners,” he said in response to her wide-eyed stare. They peeled her bra off together and after getting his first good look at her chest, Fitz had to close his eyes and press his forehead against her shoulder. Jemma had never thought her breasts were particularly special, but it was nice to know that Fitz didn’t necessarily agree.

She picked up his hand and placed it on her left breast, automatically feeling a rush of arousal as he gently fondled her. He pressed open-mouthed kisses to her neck as he felt her breast and her toes curled in anticipation of feeling that mouth elsewhere. As his tongue ran over her pulse point, her nipples tightened—god, she was so turned on, it was almost unfathomable to her.

But then Fitz was pulling away and she whined deep in the back of her throat. “What’s wrong?” she said, protesting the loss of body heat and the choice of him to move away. He kissed her hand before turning on some more of the lanterns around the bed.

“I just want to be able to see you,” he said, then guided her to lay down with her head on the towel. She was skeptical, but she trusted him. From this angle, the light from the lanterns threw the lines and sharpness of his body into intriguing shadows and she ran her hands slowly, exploratory over his shoulders, and down his chest and stomach before settling her hands on his hips.

His kiss was soft and delicate, but then he moved to lick at the valley between her breasts and all the air was knocked out of her lungs. Jemma was practically vibrating with need and possibilities as Fitz held each of her breasts in his hand, thumbing over the nipples. She rolled her hips seeking release, but his knee wasn’t there anymore. As if sensing her distress, Fitz kissed the spot under her collarbone before licking a large swipe around her areola.

She gasped, one hand grabbing a handful of sleeping bag and the other grasping at his hair. Fitz smiled at her before licking solidly across the nipple, sending another jolt of pleasure through her body. It was taking all of Jemma’s self-control not to squirm under him, and then he wrapped his mouth around her breast, sucking hard. She pushed her head into the towel and arched her back, panting.

When Fitz switched breasts, he started by biting lightly at the nipple; Jemma made soft noises in the back of her throat and he grinned at each one of them. When he evidently grew bored of that, he just sucked on it, laving it with his tongue until she was practically writhing underneath him.

“Fitz, Fitz,” she mumbled, pouting as he pulled away from her chest, but smiling as he gave her one last lick.

“Yeah, Jemma?”

“I want you to take my pants off.”

The fingers of his left hand flexed and unflexed as he held her hip. “Are-are you sure?”

Reaching for his arm, she wrapped her hand around his bicep so he would come in to kiss her. Nothing about his lips on hers would ever be hesitant or questioning and she was assertive as she sucked on his tongue. Leaning her forehead against his, she said, “I thought you wanted to see me.”

“You have no idea.” He cupped her cheek and kissed her quickly and fiercely before inching down her body. For a few minutes he stroked the skin of her stomach and hips and she wriggled underneath his ministrations, wondering if he was purposefully trying to tease her. Then he popped the button of her jeans as if the idea had suddenly occurred to him. The zipper followed, but Fitz took a second for a few deep breaths before he hooked his thumbs in the belt loops to try to pull them down.

Jemma lifted her butt off the floor so that it would slide more cleanly off and it did, right off. Then she was just lying there, wanton and needy in her purple panties. His fingers traced the faint paisley pattern on the cotton. “These too?” he said and she could tell he was trying to be cool, but the hoarseness of his voice betrayed him.

Rather than trusting her own words, she just nodded. She wanted to be bare for him. For him to touch her everywhere. Lifting her hips again, she smiled as Fitz palmed her arse as he pulled down the underwear, laying them delicately aside next to the rest of her clothes. Then she was completely naked in front of him. Part of her wanted to hide, wrap up in a sleeping bag, but it was also hard to feel vulnerable when he was looking at her like he had never seen anything quite so amazing in his life.

“I’m sorry, I need to kiss you,” he said. The kisses were short and sweet, so gentle that it was impossible not to smile. Jemma stroked his cheeks and stared into his eyes, trying to memorize their exact shade of blue. It was his smile that overwhelmed her more than anything else and all of her words caught in her throat until she could do nothing more than nuzzle his jaw and hope he knew she was happy.

When his hands circled her breasts, splayed across her ribs, then slid down the curve of her waist to her hips, Jemma wondered if this was what it was like to be one of Fitz’s projects—was he always a tinkerer? Did he like to measure and touch and verify with his bare hands? Was that his favorite way to build something up or break it apart? She shuddered at the very thought of what those hands could really do to her and when he caught her eye and winked, Jemma wondered if he was having the same idea.

“Spread your legs for me,” he said and there wasn’t even any hesitation before she did it. He moved to kneel between them, down by her feet. His hands traced over the dips of her ankles, the stretch of her calves, wrapping underneath the joints of her knees, the top of one of which he placed a kiss on. When he got to her thighs, he eased his hands up slowly, thumbs digging slightly into her flesh. She twisted her hands into the sleeping bags and grit her teeth as Fitz watched her and licked his lips. “You alright?”

“I need you to touch me, Fitz, please.” The desperation in her voice shamed her and she wanted to hide behind her arms, but instead she watched him pleadingly.

Instead of touching her, Fitz came to kiss her, his left hand holding the back of her head while his lips glided over hers. She melted a bit into his touch, though she still felt like she was burning from the inside. Then, when she wasn’t expecting it, two of his fingers slowly circled her clit. She gasped into his mouth, grabbing his shoulder.

Fitz chuckled, circling her clit again before dipping his fingers into her folds. He groaned against her throat, whispering, “Jemma, you’re just…god, you’re so wet.”

“For hours,” she admitted, rocking her hips up to his hand.

Not even bothering with one finger, Fitz thrust both inside of her as Jemma’s eyes rolled back into her head. His fingers were just the right length and thickness and she moaned freely as he pushed them in slowly at first, then gained speed quickly. Jemma buried her face into his neck as he fingered her, letting the feelings of pleasure overtake her.

It was only when Fitz’s thumb found her clit that Jemma cried out, grabbing the sleeping bag as her hips bucked off the ground. Fitz wrapped his arm around her tighter, kissing her neck and running his tongue over her pulse point. The whining deep in the back of Jemma’s throat didn’t let up as Fitz thrust his fingers deep inside of her and rubbed her clit; the rhythm between the two was off, but Jemma wondered if it was intentional.

“Fitz,” she said through gritted teeth. She had been riding a wave of arousal for hours; she had had no idea that his touch could get her so far so soon, but clearly she had underestimated him and herself. “I’m so close, Fitz.”

He nodded in understanding and after giving her a swift kiss, he removed his thumb from her clit. Jemma wasn’t at all sure how that was supposed to help, but soon he was pushing his fingers into her again with more power and when his thumb came back to her clit, it was completely in synch.

Jemma whimpered as she clutched at his hair, trying to press her body even closer to his. Fitz wrapped his arm around her as tightly as he could, pressing a kiss to her temple as he pushed his fingers in and out of her, thumb rubbing her nub exactly the way she liked it. It only took her thirty more seconds to reach climax and she threw her head back, a hoarse moan signaling her completion as she shook in his arms.

When her vision cleared, spotty with the afterglow, she stared at him as he smiled at her. “Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi.” Fitz kissed her kissed cheek sweetly. Feeling sated and boneless, Jemma lay there in his arms, only turning her head towards him for a kiss, which he happily provided. His lips just brushed over hers, but she could feel the tenderness behind every touch.

When she got strength back in her limbs, she wrapped her arms around his neck. Fitz leaned into her as she held him, his hands stroking her sides. It felt nice to have his bare chest pressed against hers. Jemma bracketed his hips with her legs, kissing him slowly and languidly, taking her time with him, pretending she had all the time left in the world.

Fitz’s hand skirted up her ribcage, cupping the side of her breast. He stroked the soft, sensitive skin with his thumb. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, so softly that it was almost to himself.

Practically purring under his touch, Jemma kissed the top of his shoulder. “You know, you’re still wearing pants.”

He grinned as he placed a kiss to her breastbone. “I am.”

“Planning on doing something about that?”

Fitz tweaked her nipple and kissed her again before extracting himself from her arms and getting to his feet. He undid the button on his pants and was reaching for his zipper when he suddenly stopped. Holding up one finger to her, he suddenly picked up a lantern and headed back into the shelves of storage. “Where are you going?” Jemma called after him, leaning up on her shoulders.

He was back a minute later and he tossed a small box at her: condoms. “Figured those might help,” he said as he unzipped his pants. “Found them earlier.”

“You think they’re still good?” Jemma said, opening the box to pull out one of the foil packages.

“Expiration date’s not for another two years.” He was taking off his jeans slowly, almost teasingly slowly for Jemma, though she could tell he was just trying not to disrupt his bandages. “Most manufacturers say to keep them out of direct sunlight—which they can’t get in this room—and under temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Even with the heat outside, without any direct sunlight, there’s no way this room would be able to sustain temperatures that high in a way that would be able to do any damage to the latex in a time period as short as the one since the last time air conditioning was on in here.”

Quirking an eyebrow at him, Jemma said, “That’s kind of sexy, that you know that.”

“Polymer engineering,” he said with a grin. The he shucked his boxers off and Jemma was staring at all of him with a huge smile on her face.

Jemma offered her hand to him and he took it, letting her pull him back down to their tangle of blankets and limbs. His lips immediately attached to her neck as she giggled. She could feel his dick pressed to her hip, heavy and hard and warm. Fitz seemed intent to count the freckles on her chest with his mouth as she tickled his hip, making him buck against her.

He took both of her hands in his, lacing their fingers together and holding them over her head. As he pressed light kisses across her jaw, he slotted their hips together, grinding on her. Jemma squeezed her eyes shut as she moaned, every nerve ending in her body ablaze, though not yet properly satisfied. She wrapped her legs around his hips, desperate for more. Soon, Fitz was practically rutting against her and she clung to his hands, her nails leaving indentations in his skin.

“Fitz, god, Fitz, please.” Her words came out broken and pleading as she stared into his eyes. They were shadowed in the dim lighting, a blue so deep that it almost hurt to look at.

After he squeezed her hand gently, he slid his fingers down her arm. She reveled in his touch from wrist to shoulder. Then she watched him reach for the condom that she had already removed from the box. She held her breath as he ripped open the package and slid it down over his cock, slowly unrolling it until he was covered. Fitz aligned with her, but he hesitated before pushing inside. The look he cast her wasn’t one to tease, but a question. After a needy noise escaped the back of her throat, Jemma nodded. She wanted this. She wanted him.

Fitz entered her slowly and it was no less than perfect when his hips finally met hers. Jemma held tight to the towel underneath her head as she enjoyed the simple feeling of him being inside her. It was Fitz who set the pace with his thrusts, deep and unhurried. Relief and pleasure mixed within her as she felt him inside of her, his wide hands holding her hips.

When he moved his hands to hold himself over her, Fitz kissed at her collarbone, her neck, her jaw, everything in easy reach other than her lips, as if he couldn’t bear to cut off the sound of her moans. Jemma placed her hands across his back. His skin was warm and she could feel the strength of his muscles as he moved inside her, the tautness of his shoulders, the flex of his hips.

Hungrily seeking his mouth, she moved her head up from the pillow, catching him at just the right moment for their lips to slot together. He growled into her mouth as she palmed his butt, losing his rhythm for just a moment. The new pace was even better, but Jemma couldn’t help bucking her hips, rolling them against his in hopes that he would quicken his stride.

“Tell me what you want,” he requested, accent thick and voice betraying his need. He leaned his forehead against hers, watching her closely.

She stared at his mouth, almost becoming distracted by how beautiful it was, dark red and swollen from her attention. “Faster, please. I need more of you.”

Fitz pressed his face against hers in acknowledgement before pulling out slowly. She was going to accuse him of teasing her before he pushed in quickly and kept up that speed with each subsequent thrust. Rocking her hips up to match him, Jemma quickly settled in to the newly punishing pace. The pounding of his body against hers was only going to add to the bruises on both of their bodies, but she couldn’t get enough of it.

Wanting to make her own mark on him, something for him to remember her by, she pressed her mouth to his pulse point and sucked hard. She bit down gently, not nearly hard enough to break skin, but hopefully enough to leave an impression that would last for a few days. Undoubtedly, the impression he had left on her would never leave her, but she hoped to linger in his mind and on his skin for a few days after they left each other for good.

“Will you touch me,” she said; it came out somewhere between a statement and a request, but Jemma would demand it if she could. Fitz, it seemed, could not deny her. Resting down on his elbows to free his hands, the length of his body pressed into her again, changing the angle of his thrusts. It took Jemma a second to get used to that, but before she could, his fingers were tracing her collarbone.

If he told her that he was trying to memorize every inch of her body so that he could remake it, she would not have doubted him. He was gentle but thorough, mapping her out with all of his fingers and the entire span of his hands. Suddenly, every inch of her skin was an erogenous zone, so it didn’t matter that he skipped the obvious ones like her breasts and her clit. Her fingers buried in his hair and he kissed down the inside of her arm while his fingers roamed the outside, circling her elbow. He followed the dip of her ribcage to the softness of her stomach around to where her waist curved over her hip; he seemed obsessed with the span of her legs, the shape of her hip as they spread open for him.

The more he touched her, the more Jemma rolled her hips and the harder and faster Fitz had to thrust into her to maintain the new pace she had set. She leaned up to nibble on his ear, letting the sting linger as she licked along the bottom of his jaw, pulling at his upper lip with her teeth. Everything was rough except his touch and the way he looked at her which was never anything but tender.

Fitz was kissing the space between her breasts when he said, “I’m getting close.” It wasn’t a surprise to her; everything had begun being less consistent, more insistent. Still, she rubbed his back both to soothe him and spur him on, thighs tightening around his hips.

“Come on, I want you to,” she said. The way he screwed up his eyes said he was getting close and before she could try to kiss him, he leaned down and wrapped his mouth around her breast, massaging the other one with his hand. Jemma instantly arched off the bed and bucked her hips against his, her orgasm overtaking her before she had even realized it. She clung to his arms as she shook with pleasure, every part of her body feeling like it was exploding at different times.

Before she even had a chance to come down from the high of her orgasm, Fitz came. He buried his head against her neck as he pushed deeply inside of her. He moaned her name against her hot, sweaty skin and every time she heard that, her heart grew and broke a little bit more. When he could look up, he immediately leaned over to kiss her, holding her as if this was the end of the world and she was the person he had chosen never to let go of.

And it was but she wasn’t.

After he rolled to the side to hold her, she lingered in his arms for as long as possible. The kisses they shared were at first eager, then leisurely, and she wanted to refuse to move from this spot ever. Finally, after a kiss to her forehead, he slowly removed himself from her arms. She watched his naked body for a bit, paying special attention to his bum as he searched for the garbage bags she had brought, probably to toss the condom. Confident he would come back, at least for now, she let her eyes drift close and enjoyed the lasting pleasure that was still flowing throughout her body.

When he returned to her, he was still naked, but he had turned off all of the lanterns but one and moved the fan so it wasn’t blowing directly on them. After placing the gun within arm’s reach, he climbed into the pile of blankets with her. He covered them both up before wrapping his arms around her again, holding her close against his chest. Logically, she knew they should get dressed, be prepared for anything, but she just wanted to stay like this; she felt far too safe and comfortable to move.

Fitz was whispering something in her ear as she started to fall asleep. She supposed it was probably important, but she found it impossible to do more than nuzzle his chin and press small kisses on his mouth before burying her head in his chest. He chuckled and kissed the top of her head as she finally drifted off to her first restful sleep in as long as she could remember.

When she woke up, she stretched out across the bed. She had bruises in a heavy host of places that she was beginning to feel and her joints popped as she started to give some life to them. The next thing she noticed was that their bed was empty. She stretched out again, made somewhat of a snow angel, but came up with no Fitz. Maybe, she thought with a lump in her throat, what he had been trying to tell her last night actually had been important.

There was the sound of footsteps next to her head and she turned, first seeing brown work boots and then following up the cargo pants and button down to Fitz’s face. “Good morning,” he said with a smile. “Actually, it’s actually sort of noonish, but whatever.”

“Morning,” she said, voice still sleep-logged. “New clothes?”

“Pulled them out of the car.”

“You shouldn’t have gone out there alone,” she said, sitting up and holding a sleeping bag to her chest.

Leaning down to kiss her forehead, he said, “I’m fine. I double checked everything, there was no trouble out there. All clear. And the other ones were rank. And look!” He pulled up his pant leg, revealing a so-so bandage job. “Did it myself.”

“It sure looks like it.”

Dropping the leg of the cargo pant, he sighed. “That bad?”

“I’ll fix it.”

Corner of his lips quirking up in a smile, he said, “Do you want to get dressed before or after breakfast?”

Jemma dug around in her backpack for her one spare change of clothes, something Hunter had been gracious enough to leave behind for her. “Depends, what are my choices for breakfast?”

“Cereal, mostly.” Jemma held back a groan in preparation for whatever sugary concoction he was going to eat. “I’ve pulled Raisin Bran.” Oh, well, that wasn’t so bad. “That’s for you, I’m eating Lucky Charms.” Of course, he was, and she sighed. Setting the unopened boxes in front of her, Fitz said, “There are some Styrofoam bowls, so here’s where our options get exciting: we can eat them dry, with water, or with the world’s warmest soy milk.”

“Dry it is,” Jemma said, picking up the purple box and ripping the top open. “I’m just not brave enough for the world’s warmest soy milk. And I don’t think anyone should be.”

“Amen, sweetheart.”

They ate in silence for a long time, both hungry after mostly eating snacks for a few days and meals coming at such sporadic times. Last night’s events seemed to have particularly fueled their appetite. Fitz brought over some beef jerky and more dried fruit for them to try to make a more balanced meal with, especially when Jemma criticized how fast he would crash with just the sugar intake. “You’re just saying that because you want a marshmallow,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

“Fitz.”

He dug into the box until he came up with a single marshmallow and held it out to her: the pink heart. Her own heart started pounding as she accepted it from him. She wondered if there was any sort of symbolism there or if that was really the first marshmallow he had found. Regardless, she stuck it in her mouth, letting it slowly dissolve on her tongue before she went back to her cereal.

When he was finished eating, Fitz closed up his cereal box and set it aside. “We should…we should probably get going today. So you can make your boat.”

Jemma simply nodded, not knowing what would happen if she tried to open her mouth. It was a long walk all the way back to the coast, and a backpack filled with supplies was only going to weigh her down. Maybe she should have even started walking by now, but Hunter would stay until the last minute and then longer. She knew he would.

No longer hungry, she set the Raisin Bran aside and stood up to put on her clothes. She wasn’t sure if it was deliberate that she turned away from him to dress, but it didn’t make her heart stop beating any less hard when she pulled on her clean bra, hooking the same clasps he had triumphed over just a few hours prior. She ignored the way her hands shook as she put her hair up in a ponytail again; it didn’t need to look pretty, it just needed to be functional.

“Why don’t you pack up your bag with whatever you want to take,” Fitz said when she was finished, moving cases of water towards the door. It was clear he was giving her first pick of the rations and it was a sweet gesture. “We can move everything for the car out to the hallway and you can stand guard as I load it up. Then I can drive you out to the harbor.”

Jemma froze where she was putting bottles of water into her backpack. “Wait, what?”

Fitz seemed to be considering whether he wanted to take a sleeping bag with him. “What, you thought I was going to let you walk? C’mon, Jemma.”

Clambering to her feet, she crossed her arms at him. “Absolutely not. It’s in the exact opposite direction that you need to go.”

“Twenty, maybe thirty miles out of my way.” He added the sleeping bag over next to one of the cases of water. “I drive quickly.”

“You’ll be wasting gas.”

“I’ll steal some more.”

She found it hard to breathe, air coming in shallow gasps. “You’ll…you’ll have so much less room in the car for supplies! I take up a lot of room.” She ignored his classless snort. “And if I’m in your passenger seat, you could put something useful there like water or food.”

The roll of his eyes was impossible to miss. “I can come back here and get more supplies, I don’t think anyone else is going to find this place in the meantime and be like, ‘Oh, I bet there’s a secret room with enough food and water for months.” When she opened her mouth to protest again, he took her face in his hands and kissed her deeply. She sagged against him, too exhausted to fight and kiss back at the same time. He pressed soft, lingering kisses on her cheek and jaw.

“Here’s how this is going to happen,” Fitz insisted. “You are going to get into that bloody car with me. I’m going to drive you right up to that dock and, after I make sure it’s safe, I’m going to wait there until you get on that boat.” He dug his hand into her hair, loosening strands from her ponytail. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Jemma. I’m not.”

She leaned into his touch. “I know.” After kissing his palm, she moved away from his space and bent down to rearrange the contents of her backpack. For a few minutes, all she did was move things around, not really making any sort of progress. She traced the empty pocket where her gun had been kept for so long. “You could come with me.”

Fitz was moving more cases of water towards the door, but he stopped mid-step. After swallowing hard, he continued towards the door, adding that case on top of the others. “You told me that those trips were for people of means who paid for it. I’ve never been one of those people.”

Standing up to face him, she said, “Well, I’m not one of those people either, Fitz. But if I tell Hunter that I won’t leave unless you’re with me, he’ll let you come.” The sound Fitz made was something like a scoff. “He will. If we bring supplies like this, it can be like a trade.” She rubbed her arms slowly, rocking back on her heels. “If I tell him that I won’t come unless you can too, he won’t have any other choice.”

He ran his hands over his face and through his hair, expression completely inscrutable. “Jemma, it’s—”

“What chance do you really have trying to get to L.A., Fitz?” she demanded, shoulders shaking.

“I’ve done the math,” he muttered.

“You could go find your mum!” she said and she knew immediately it was a low blow the way he sucked in a sharp breath. “She could finally know that you’re alive. You could finally…remember what it’s like not to be scared all the time.” Jemma licked her lips and swallowed hard. “You could be with me.”

Jemma wasn’t even sure she had said it until his eyes lit up and he took a few steps closer to her, close enough that she could reach out for his hand. He was the one who linked their fingers together, who didn’t dare to stare away from her eyes. “I’ve had this plan for so long.”

She shook her head sharply. “So break it.” Twisting her hand in his shirt, she imagined how easy it would be to pop all the buttons and send them flying. “Fitz, I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering what happened to you. I just can’t. You’re not some guy I met at a grocer, someone whose leg I patched up.”

“You’re so much more than that, Jemma,” he said, leaning in to kiss her. She clung to him tightly, as if daring him to leave her. But he didn’t, he wrapped his arms around her to pull her as close as she could be while standing up, her head tucked perfectly under Fitz’s once their kiss broke apart.

When he finally stepped away, he looked over at the pallets. “Alright, I’ve got to rethink this. Supplies for a boat, mostly water, nutritious food. Batteries, no one can ever have enough batteries. I assume your friend has blankets?”

She found herself literally shaking in relief, wiping at her eyes even as she smiled. “He took all the stuff from my flat already. I own a lot of blankets.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me in the least,” Fitz said, smiling at her from over his shoulder. Then he turned and wrapped his arms around her, meeting her in the middle as she leaned up to kiss him deeply. His fingers stroked her cheek. “Hey, I’m not going anywhere.”

Nodding against his neck, she smiled. “Good.”

After Jemma patched up his leg again, they set to work. It didn’t take them long to fill the car with the cases of water and Jemma-approved snacks (though Fitz snuck a couple of things in there too). Packets of batteries were stuck in every spare crevice and opening until the car looked like a Tetris board. Jemma had a feeling Fitz had always been good at Tetris.

When they went back into their room for one last check, Fitz let his hand drape casually at her waist. “Have we forgotten anything?”

All evidence that they had been there had been disassembled: the sleeping bags and tarps were folded and left on various shelves in the room, the batteries taken out of the air conditioner. As a last minute decision, Fitz said that they were going to find some place to shove that air conditioner in the car; if the yacht was a “yacht” in name only, they might be glad they had it.

The bags of biohazard had been taken out back and burned. While it was possibly suspicious if someone was close enough to see the smoke before they had put the fire out, leaving potential biohazard on top of an already flowing dumpster could be asking for trouble.

Jemma looked around the room that had become their sanctuary. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

With that, they closed the door and Fitz replaced the lock, hanging it so it looked like it was secure. They walked hand in hand towards the exit, and after checking to make sure they were clear, hurried to their spots in the car. Jemma slipped into the passenger seat easily, dropping the pistol that had been tucked in the back of her jeans into the cup holder.

Fitz smiled at her as he turned the ignition and the car purred to life. After they buckled up and Fitz put the car into gear, she rested her head on his shoulder, eyes closed, hand intertwined with his. “How’s your leg feeling?”

Chuckling, he kissed the top of her head affectionately. “All good, Doc.”

Then he drove out of the parking lot, heading east, sun shining behind them.

 


End file.
